Ms Laura Behan:

I will talk more about the low emission vehicle, LEV, task force. It was established by the Government between the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport because it was recognised that EVs are significant for us on the transport side in delivering the decarbonisation of transport. Many of the policy levers on EVs do not, however, reside with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. The LEV task force was an attempt to bring all of the Government Departments with responsibilities in the area of regulation, infrastructure, pricing incentives, etc., around the same table. It is intended to tackle, in a concerted way, the wrinkles and difficulties that might exist around the system on the deployment of EVs. On the work the LEV task force has done, the first phase has focused on EVs. The Deputies are probably aware that an interim report was made by the LEV task force to the Government in advance of the budget last year and that a range of new incentives for the roll-out of EVs was announced then.

Some of them have been introduced by our Department, including the tolling incentive and the grant for taxis and hackneys. The benefit-in-kind incentive was introduced by the Minister for Finance and further supports have been put in place by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and the Environment for infrastructure, including home-charging grants. We have seen the results of that concerted action this year with the increased take-up of EVs. That was from a very low base and it had been very disappointing. We had a generous range of incentives in place to facilitate the take-up of EVs before we even set up the LEV task force. That did not seem to be enough to trigger a mass take-up because of people's concerns about the vehicles themselves and, most likely, range anxiety.

However, following the putting in place of a targeted range of incentives, we have seen a very significant response. In the first four months of this year, we saw more EVs bought in Ireland than in all of 2017. July and August have been record months for the purchase of EVs. We have 6,500 EVs on the road now. That does not sound like a lot but from where we were two or three years ago, it is a significant increase. That pattern is continuing. There has been a good response to the incentives that have been put in place.